30 October 2015

In 1965, textile manufacturer DuPont de Nemours International engaged Jean Shrimpton, then the world's highest-paid model, to travel to Australia to be a judge in the 1965 "Fashions on the Field". Her fee for the two-week visit was £2,000, an enormous sum, equivalent to at least a year's wages for the average Australian man. Even The Beatles had been paid only £1,500 for their tour of Australia in 1964.

It has been said that Shrimpton, more than any other model of the 1960s, can lay claim to having been the world's first supermodel... It was expected that when attending Derby Day, she would be wearing a beautiful hat and accessories, including gloves and stockings, which were de rigueur for the ultra-conservative Melbourne establishment.

The garment Shrimpton and Rolfe developed for Derby Day was a simple white shift dress. However, DuPont had not supplied enough fabric to complete the intended design, so at Shrimpton's suggestion, Rolfe improvised, by finishing the hemline a daring 4 in (10 cm) above the knee. Shrimpton later claimed to have told Rolfe that "nobody's going to take any notice…" She also later told The Australian Women's Weekly magazine "I always wear my day dresses above the knee."

Her skimpy outfit contrasted starkly with the conservative attire of the other racegoers, and she was openly scorned by them, particularly as she was defying protocol by wearing no hat, stockings or gloves. As well as being the target of catcalls from men and jeers from women, she was surrounded by kneeling cameramen, all shooting upwards to make the dress look even shorter.

Conservative Australia was shocked. Former Lady Mayoress of Melbourne, Lady Nathan, accused Shrimpton of being "a child," and even prominent Australian model and columnist Maggie Tabberer was critical. Radio stations and newspapers published editorials for and against the outfit, and Shrimpton defended it. "I don't see what was wrong with the way I looked. I wouldn't have dressed differently for a race meeting anywhere in the world", she was reported as saying at the time.

The controversy quickly spread to Britain, where the press angrily defended Shrimpton.
According to the Australian analysis, Shrimpton's Derby Day appearance was the moment when a global youth culture began to shape young Australians' sense of style. A reviewer of that analysis has claimed that all the young girls wanted to be like "the Shrimp": free, cool, and elegant."

Like some people who might rather not admit it, wolves faced with a
scarcity of potential sexual partners are not beneath lowering their
standards. It was desperation of this sort, biologists reckon, that led
dwindling wolf populations in southern Ontario to begin, a century or
two ago, breeding widely with dogs and coyotes. The clearance of forests
for farming, together with the deliberate persecution which wolves
often suffer at the hand of man, had made life tough for the species.
That same forest clearance, though, both permitted coyotes to spread
from their prairie homeland into areas hitherto exclusively lupine, and
brought the dogs that accompanied the farmers into the mix.

Interbreeding between animal species usually leads to offspring less
vigorous than either parent—if they survive at all. But the combination
of wolf, coyote and dog DNA that resulted from this reproductive
necessity generated an exception. The consequence has been booming
numbers of an extraordinarily fit new animal spreading
through the eastern part of North America. Some call this creature the
eastern coyote. Others, though, have dubbed it the “coywolf”. Whatever
name it goes by, Roland Kays of North Carolina State University, in
Raleigh, reckons it now numbers in the millions...

He worked out that, though coyote DNA dominates, a tenth of the average coywolf’s genetic material is dog and a quarter is wolf... At 25kg or more, many coywolves have twice the heft of purebred coyotes.
With larger jaws, more muscle and faster legs, individual coywolves can
take down small deer...

The animal’s range has encompassed America’s entire north-east, urban
areas included, for at least a decade, and is continuing to expand in
the south-east following coywolves’ arrival there half a century ago... coywolves are now living even in large
cities, like Boston, Washington and New York. According to Chris Nagy of
the Gotham Coyote Project, which studies them in New York, the Big
Apple already has about 20, and numbers are rising...

Some speculate that this adaptability to city life is because coywolves’
dog DNA has made them more tolerant of people and noise, perhaps
counteracting the genetic material from wolves—an animal that dislikes
humans. And interbreeding may have helped coywolves urbanise in another
way, too, by broadening the animals’ diet.... Coywolves eat pumpkins, watermelons and other
garden produce, as well as discarded food...

Whether the coywolf actually has evolved into a distinct species is debated...

More at the link, and a discussion thread at Reddit. Quite interesting.

29 October 2015

The abbreviation "Mrs." stands for the word "missus," which doesn't have an "R" in it. So what's up? Mental Floss explains:

Originally, Mrs. was an abbreviation for mistress, the female counterpart of master. There were various spellings for both forms—it might be maistresse/maistre or maystres/mayster—and variation in pronunciation too. The word mistress
had a more general meaning of a woman who is in charge of something. A
governess in charge of children was a mistress, as was a woman head of a
household. The abbreviated form was used most frequently as a title for
a married woman.

Eventually, the title form took on a contracted, 'r'-less pronunciation, and by the end of the 18th
century “missis” was the most acceptable way to say it. (A 1791
pronouncing dictionary said that to pronounce it "mistress" would
“appear quaint and pedantic.”) The full word mistress had by then come to stand for a paramour, someone who was explicitly not a Mrs.

Sometimes a title is not an abbreviation for a word, but a word all of its own.

The United Nations General Assembly voted on Tuesday on a resolution
calling on Washington to end its embargo on Cuba. 191 of 193 countries
voted for the resolution — 99 percent of the member states.

For
the 24th year in a row, the U.S. and its allies were the only nations to
vote against the measure. For the 24th year in a row, the U.S. has
utterly defied the will of the entire international community.

An embargo of sugar, oil, and weapons was first imposed on Cuba by
President Eisenhower in 1960. In 1962, two years later, the Kennedy
administration expanded the embargo to impede virtually all imports...

The Obama administration has often tried to differentiate itself from
the Bush administration by appealing to rhetoric concerning
international law. Yet votes like these prove such statements to be
hollow. Behind the veneer of Obama’s emphasis on international rules and
norms is the cold logic of empire: The U.S., as the global economic and
military hegemon, will do what it wants, when it wants.

Perhaps a reader here can explain to me why this embargo continues to exist. Presumably it involves corporate $$$$$$$$$.

Addendum. Here is a succinct and informed explanation provided by reader Con:

The word "embargo" is used by the US government, but in Cuba and other
Latin American states it is known (more accurately) as a "blockade". The
blockade is in fact illegal under international law as it extends far
beyond restricting trade between the US and Cuba, imposing harsh
sanctions on those outside of the US who would dare to trade freely with
Cuba (i.e. an "extra-territorial" measure). Companies have been fined
and had assets expropriated and the legal rights infringed in all manner
of ways. Canada even has a law which is aimed to circumvent the
application of the relevant US extra-territorial law as it applies to
Canada; the "Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act."

The
blockade began during the Cold War and was designed to isolate Cuba and
damage its economy, in order to undermine its socialist government and
return it to the US sphere of influence. It was initially very
successful, with almost every other country in the Americas breaking
relations with Cuba, the exceptions being Canada and Mexico. The
blockade was aimed not only at the Cuban people, but implicitly at any
other Latin American nation which might have opted for socialism.

Cuba
survived by trading with the USSR and Eastern European trading bloc
(the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, CMEA) and with China. After
the collapse of the European socialist bloc, many supporters of the
blockade had high hopes that the Cuban revolution would collapse, but
instead it weathered the storm, and is now stronger than ever.

Over
the decades the blockade has lost more and more ground in the rest of
the Americas; and more generally, since the collapse of all the
US-backed military regimes which were once so common, the prestige and
political and military power of the US throughout the Americas has been
eroded dramatically. Now it's the US which is isolated. Cuba has good
diplomatic relations now with every other country in the Americas, and
is increasingly connected to the wider Latin American economic system,
and even, in some ways, a central component of it. Cuba is one of the
main forces in the ALBA trading bloc that includes several countries in
Central and South America and the Caribbean, and also has good trade
links to Brazil. In recent years a submarine fibre optic cable linking
Cuba and Jamaica to the South American mainland has broken the
telecommunications blockade.

It has reached the point where the
Obama administration has recognised the failure of their Cold War policy
and are now negotiating an end to it. They have re-established
diplomatic relations with the island, but the blockade is the biggest
issue which needs to be resolved before relations are fully normalized.
The other biggie being the illegal US military occupation of Guantanamo
Bay, where they have a naval base, and the infamous prison camp and
torture facility.

Law enforcement sources tell TMZ ... they have reviewed video of the accident and it shows Plitt standing on the tracks as the train barrels toward him. Shortly before the train reaches Plitt he assumes a runners stance and bolts down the track...

And law enforcement tells us they found multiple energy drink bottles near the track and authorities think Plitt may have been hopped up from the caffeine. We're told he was shooting a commercial for the product."

In the nineteenth century, "revenue stamps" were purchased and used to pay taxes on a variety of items and transactions - mortgages, deeds, cigarettes, wine, oleomargarine, life insurance, playing cards, etc.

Concerned about fraudulent cleaning and reuse of such stamps, the Bureau of Internal Revenue in 1871 issued a new set of stamps (the "Second Issue') with elaborately detailed designs and colors and a special paper which incorporated silk fibers. A most interesting article (pdf) in the American Philatelist offers more details:

The original tax schedule included several open-ended
rates, and stamps were created that were, in principle at least,
adequate to pay them. For example, a deed for real estate whose
value exceeded $20,000 was taxed in multiples of $20 (at $20
for the first $20,000, plus an additional $20 for every additional
$10,000 or fractional part thereof ), to be paid by $20 Conveyance stamps. In practice, though, this proved unwieldy. For a
property with a $200,000 value, a total of 19 $20 stamps would
be required; and for $500,000, 49 stamps.

When the First Issues were replaced by the Second Issues in September and October 1871, the $200 denomination
(Scott R132) was retained and a $500 (Scott R133) added, to
further facilitate payment of large taxes, on deeds or mortgages for amounts exceeding $500,000, or estates exceeding $1 million. To foil counterfeiters they were printed by
a complicated tricolored process, the world’s only engraved
tricolored stamps, considered by many as the most beautiful stamps ever printed. The abrupt repeal of the documentary stamp taxes effective October 1, 1872, ensured that these
stamps would be as rare as they are beautiful: just 446 $200
stamps were sold, and 210 of the $500.

The article at the link has several awesome photos of multiples of these stamps being used on documents (deed for a silver mine, for example).

Robinson's early struggles led many of his poems to have a dark pessimism and his stories to deal with "an American dream gone awry." His eldest brother, Dean Robinson, was a doctor and had become addicted to laudanum while medicating himself for neuralgia. The middle brother, Herman, a handsome and charismatic man, married the woman Edwin loved, Emma Löehen Shepherd... Herman Robinson suffered business failures, became an alcoholic, and ended up estranged from his wife and children. Herman died impoverished in 1909 of tuberculosis at Boston City Hospital Robinson's poem "Richard Cory" was thought by Emma (Herman's wife) to refer to God and her husband.

Stella Young is a comedian and journalist who happens to go about her
day in a wheelchair — a fact that doesn't, she'd like to make clear,
automatically turn her into a noble inspiration to all humanity. In this
very funny talk, Young breaks down society's habit of turning disabled
people into "inspiration porn."

The profits generated by the corrections economy have not been
definitively calculated, and a comprehensive audit would be a staggering
accounting task. The figure would have to include the cost of
private-prison real estate, mandatory drug testing, electronic
monitoring anklets, prison-factory labor, prison-farm labor,
prison-phone contracts, and the service fees charged to prisoners’
families when they wire money for supplies from the prison commissary.
Contracted commercial activity flows in and out of every city jail,
rural prison, suburban probation office, and immigration detention
center. For stakeholders in the largest peacetime carceral apparatus in
the history of the world, the opportunities for profit add up. For
analysts like Sommer, the system also offers a safe, government-secured
investment...

Consider the prison-phone industry. For inmates, especially urban
felons shipped to far-off rural sites, calls to the outside are a social
lifeline and a proven method for reducing recidivism. But here, too,
Wall Street has identified a high-demand, low-supply commodity. Other
government contractors, be they food suppliers or dentists, collect fees
paid out by the state. Prison-phone companies, and the
prison-wire-transfer companies that are following their model, extract
revenues directly from inmates and their families. (Fifteen dollars for a
fifteen-minute phone call is not uncommon.)

As with partnership corrections, profits are largely determined by
contracts, but phone and money-transfer companies sweeten the deals for
their public partners with profit-sharing perks. These commissions kick
back anywhere from 40 to 60 percent of revenue to the contracting
government agency. According to a study by Prison Legal News, a
publication of the Human Rights Defense Center, about 85 percent of
non-federal jails sign up for commission-added contracts, and because
commissions increase in proportion to the total contract value,
cash-strapped public officials are motivated to choose the most
expensive contract available. Prison Legal News found that when
Louisiana put out a public request for proposals for phone services in
2001, the agency stated the wish explicitly: “The state desires that the
bidder’s compensation percentages . . . be as high as possible.”

The FCC said its vote yesterday "lower[s] the cap to 11 cents
per minute for all local and long distance calls from state and federal
prisons, while providing tiered rates for jails to account for the
higher costs of serving jails and smaller institutions."

Part of the problem is that jails and prisons have been charging
phone companies big commissions in exchange for exclusive contracts.
These commission payments are passed on to prisoners.

The FCC did not outlaw commissions but said that it "strongly
encourages parties to move away from site commissions and urges states
to take action on this issue." Clyburn said that "states must do their
part and take a hard look at their site commission practices and how
such payments impact prices, service, and the reverberating impact on
the community."

A couple had a child with fertility assistance, but later found out that
the child’s blood type did not match either parent. A paternity test,
using cheek swabs, determined that the man was not the father of the
baby. The couple had more tests, and was prepared to sue the fertility
clinic. Then they did a genetic test through 23andMe, which tests many
more markers than a standard paternity test in order to establish
genetic ties in extended families. That test said the man was the baby’s
uncle!

The explanation is that the man is a genetic chimera.
Before he was born, he had a fraternal twin that did not develop into a
viable baby. But the vanished twin’s DNA survived by being absorbed into
the surviving twin...

However, since the cells of his lost twin brother are a part of him, he
is still the father. The case shows how a person cannot be defined by
their DNA. About one in eight single-child births start out as multiple
pregnancies, so chimerism is probably more common than we know.

In order to qualify for financial assistance in supporting her young
family, Fairchild was required to undergo DNA testing to prove that she
was the mother of children for whom she was claiming... To her horror, the young mother was informed that she would be the
subject of an investigation into possible welfare fraud as the DNA tests
had revealed no genetic link between her and the children she claimed
were hers...

More information at the links, or type "chimera" in the new search box in the right sidebar to see unusual butterflies, apples, and legendary monsters.

One wonders how many lives have been affected/disrupted by genetic testing that did not take the possibility of chimerism into account - especially paternity cases.

23 October 2015

"...bedbugs
have discovered a new way to hitchhike in and out of beds: library
books. It turns out that tiny bedbugs and their eggs can hide in the
spines of hardcover books. The bugs crawl out at night to feed, find a
new home in a headboard, and soon readers are enjoying not only plot
twists but post-bite welts.

As
libraries are scrambling to deal with the problem, so are some book
borrowers. Not wanting to spread the misery, considerate patrons
sometimes call ahead to discuss with librarians how best to return lent
materials from their bedbug-infested homes. Usually, a meeting is
arranged so the patron can hand off the offending books or DVDs in
Ziploc bags to an employee outside the library.

John Furman, the owner of Boot-a-Pest [ed: clever name], a team of bedbug exterminators
based on Long Island, said he has had hundreds of clients buy a portable
heater called PackTite to kill bedbug life, baking any used or borrowed
book as a preventive measure before taking it to bed...

To reassure skittish patrons like Mrs. McAdoo, libraries are training
circulation staff members to look for carcasses and live insects... Others vacuum the crevices of couches, and some furniture is being
reupholstered with vinyl or leatherette to make it less hospitable to
insects...

Lots more information at the New York Times source article, published in 2012.

A BIGOT list (or bigot list) is a list of personnel possessing appropriate security clearance and who are cleared to know details of a particular operation, or other sensitive information.

One common etymology is that BIGOT is a reversal of the codewords "TO GIB", meaning "To Gibraltar". The context of this etymology is the Allied invasion of North Africa in November 1942: "TO GIB" was stamped on the orders of military and intelligence staff travelling from Britain to North Africa to prepare for the operation. The majority of personnel made a dangerous journey by sea, through areas patrolled by German U-boats, however certain individuals whose contribution to the campaign or whose mission was vital were classified "TOGIB", and were flown to Africa on a safer route via Gibraltar.

Several sources state that BIGOT was a codeword for Operation Overlord, the Western Allies' plan to invade German-occupied western Europe during World War II, and that the term was an acronym for "British Invasion of German Occupied Territory". It is possible that the term, supposedly suggested by Winston Churchill himself, was a "backronym"—a phrase created to fit an acronym such as the existing "To Gibraltar" code.

The list of personnel cleared to know details of Overlord was known as the BIGOT list, and the people on it were known as "Bigots". The details of the invasion plan were so secret, adherence to the list was rigidly enforced. U.S. military advisor George Elsey tells a story in his memoirs about how a junior officer turned away King George VI from the intelligence centre on the USS Ancon, because, as he explained to a superior officer "...nobody told me he was a Bigot."

Although both derivations are of British origin, the term is widely used in the United States intelligence agencies.

Relevant links at the source. This looks like excellent material for the QI elves on No Such Thing as a Fish.

The image and the report in the Los Angeles Times was posted several weeks ago. I'm putting it up now because of the reports of the biggest hurricane in the history of the Western Hemisphere now boiling in the ocean off the western coast of Mexico.

Hurricane Patricia is expected to arrive on the coast with 200-mph winds and a foot of rain, which will effectively scrub the arrival site to the ground as a tornado does. It is then expected to attentuate over land, heading toward Texas, where many legislators continue to deny the existence of climate change.

Addendum: A hat tip to reader Danack, who found this graph showing the degree to which Hurricane Patricia is an outlier compared to all other recorded storms in the Eastern Pacific:

During the recent political debates, my wife and I were musing about whether "commentate" was a verb. "Commentators" are abundant in politics (and in sports), but we thought "commentate" would be a ridiculously elaborate form of "comment" in the way that "to orientate" is misused for the verb "to orient."

But "commentate" does exist. The link goes to the online Wiktionary; the hard-copy dictionaries in our house vary in this regard. Some don't list it, others cite is as "rare." (I do have the sense that if/when used, "commentate" would imply a simultaneous response to an activity - sporting event, news item - as opposed to "comment," which might refer to a long-ago event.)

I know there are readers out there who are proofreaders or have editorial experience and may have a well-thumbed Strunk and White on the bookshelf. Please feel free to commentate.

It's embedded in the right sidebar below the translator and above my profile.

This replaces the Lijit search box that was available when I first set up the blog about a hundred years ago. It had become outmoded and of modest value, and frankly I had reverted to searching my own blog by typing TYWKIWDBI and the search term into Google (one of the advantages of having an odd name).

This morning the
"sovrn
Publisher
Support
Team" notified users that the Lijit search was being "laid to rest." At their suggestion I have inserted in its place a Google Custom Search, which performs a basic Google search, displaying results you can sort by relevance or date. I suppose it might sneak in some ads, but TYWKIWDBI itself will remain ad-free.There are now over 13,000 posts on TYWKIWDBI, so I think an improved search engine should be quite useful/entertaining. Try searching something on this blog, and let me know what you think of the usefulness, capabilities, or limitations of the tool.

A hat tip to my cousin in Barcelona for sending me the link to this video, which is a European production aired by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation.

This is a documentary that examines the history and present implementation of "planned obsolescence." It begins with the worldwide Phoebus cartel that controlled light bulb manufacturing in the early 20th century, then looks at computer printers - at least some of which are manufactured with a chip that locks up the printer after X number of pages are printed.

Probably not 1 in 100 readers of this blog will have the time to view an hour-long program, but I encourage those interested to at least skip ahead to see the effects of global e-waste dumping and Ghana and listen to some of the arguments for "de-growth."

You're probably about 15 years old, so I
don't expect you to be very mature or for you to want a little girl on
your skate ramp for that matter.

What you don't know is that my daughter has
been wanting to skateboard for months. I actually had to convince her
that skateboarding wasn't for just for boys. So when we walked up to the skate park and
saw that it was full of teenaged boys who were smoking and swearing, she
immediately wanted to turn around and go home.

I secretly wanted to go too because I didn't
want to have to put on my mom voice and exchange words with you. I also didn't want my daughter to feel like
she had to be scared of anyone, or that she wasn't entitled to that
skate park just as much as you were.

So when she said, "Mom it's full of older
boys," I calmly said, "So what, they don't own the skate park." She proceeded to go down the ramp in spite
of you and your friends flying past her and grinding rails beside her.

She only had two or three runs in before you approached her and said "Hey, excuse me ..."

I immediately prepared to deliver my "She's
allowed to use this park just as much as you guys" speech when I heard
you say, "Your feet are wrong. Can I help you?"

You proceeded to spend almost an hour with
my daughter showing her how to balance and steer, and she listened to
you a feat not attained by most adults.

You held her hand and helped her get up when
she fell down and I even heard you tell her to stay away from the rails
so that she wouldn't get hurt.

I want you to know that I am proud that you
are part of my community, and I want to thank you for being kind to my
daughter, even though your friends made fun of you for it.

She left the skate park with a sense of
pride and with the confidence that she can do anything, because of you.

"With Red: A Natural History of the Redhead, Jacky Colliss
Harvey sets out to discover everything — what it takes to make a
redhead, where in the world they come from and why they exist at all;
whether redheads are actually different or just treated differently; how
they got their reputation, what that reputation might be and whether
they deserve it."

"...convention is being challenged by a more professional model at the
highest levels as top players urgently pursue college scholarships,
training becomes more specialized, big business opens its wallet, school
choice expands, and schools seek to market themselves through sports,
some for financial survival. Increasingly,
prep football talent is being consolidated on powerful public, private,
parochial, charter and magnet school teams. And recruiting to those
schools is widespread in one guise or another."

Razor scooter fail reminds us that smokers and drinkers aren't the only ones causing higher costs for medical insurance.

"A postgraduate student of counter-terrorism was falsely accused of being a terrorist after an official at Staffordshire University had spotted him reading a textbook entitled Terrorism Studies in the college library."

“The Mercer Island School District and school teams have recently
revisited expectations for student behavior to address student
safety. This means while at play, especially during recess and
unstructured time, students are expected to keep their hands to
themselves. The rationale behind this is to ensure the physical and
emotional safety of all students..."

A Congressman drank the Pope's leftover water. "The congressman also gave some of the papal water to his wife Debra, and two staff members, to drink. He then invited US Senator Bob Casey, also from Pennsylvania, into his office. Senator Casey brought his wife and mother and they all placed their fingers in the glass."

The top photo is of a replica of the 1868 locomotive "Leviathan," constructed by David Klocke, and photographed by Fred Boucher at Steamfest 2009. The other images embedded in this divertimento come from a gallery of drawings posted at BibliOdyssey, as a reminder to me that not all early American locomotives were painted black. Identities and information about the locomotives at the link.

"A $4,200 recording booth,
$5,400 worth of movie animation software and two $750 sewing machines.
No, it’s not the wish list of a particularly spoiled, artsy kid. It’s a
plan for the future of the Dakota County libraries.

People
are visiting libraries less as e-books become more popular, Deputy
Library Director Ben Trapskin said. So communities are rethinking how to
use the buildings. “We
really want to breathe some new life into what we’re all about,” he
said. “This is a good reason for people to come back into the space.”...

While Hennepin County libraries do not have a maker spaces for adults,
they have added programming, like a knitting group, to fill that niche,
Turner said...

Equipment and furnishings
are expected to cost $55,000 and will be covered by a grant and a
donation. The county is still figuring out how to cover future expenses
like repairing equipment and training staff, Trapskin said.

Staffing
the area will require a balancing act, said Darcy Schatz, who is on the
county’s Library Advisory Committee. Employees will need to help run
the equipment without sacrificing other services, she said.

But
as communities’ needs have changed, Trapskin said libraries have gotten
used to shifting staff and resources — like the donation that will help
fund Dakota County’s maker space. That money was originally designated
for print reference books."

Ceratocaryum argenteum, a
rush-like flowering plant native to South Africa... produces large, round nuts that are strikingly similar in
appearance, smell, and chemical composition to antelope droppings (in
particular those of the eland and the bontebok), which the dung beetles accordingly roll away and bury, effectively sowing a new generation of C. argenteum.
Although scientists have observed dung beetles providing similar
services elsewhere in the plant kingdom—as, for example, when the dung
happens to contain fruit seeds—this is the first known case of a dung
beetle helping and not ending up with any dung.

Jeremy Midgley, the lead author of the study, which was published on Monday, in the journal Nature Plants, first became interested in Ceratocaryum
nuts because of their large size. This quality, he originally
hypothesized, might make them attractive to rodents. From the beginning,
he told me, the nuts’ distinctive smell was “very apparent and was
confusing,” but he thought there was a chance that other animals might
not find it off-putting. Using motion-sensitive cameras, Midgley and his
colleagues recorded two hundred and fourteen instances of mice
interacting with the nuts. In this footage, he said, the general mouse
attitude appeared to be “either disinterested or even repelled.” But, by
triggering the cameras, the mice revealed something that the biologists
might otherwise never have noticed: dung beetles industriously rolling
the nuts away. Suddenly, Midgley said, “the color, shape, size, and
smell made sense.” The scientists revised their experiment, setting out a
large number of Ceratocaryum nuts after the rain (a time
favored by dung beetles) and equipping them with fluorescent thread
markers that enabled them to be tracked with a special flashlight. Of
the sixty-six nuts that were successfully recovered, fifty-three had
been buried, beetle-style.

03 October 2015

A truly impressive find. And apparently it was disarticulated by early humans in the region:

James Bristle of Lima Township was digging in a soybean field Monday
when he and his friend pulled up what they first thought was a bent,
muddy old fence post. But it was actually the rib bone of an ancient woolly mammoth...

“We think we’re dealing with an animal that was at least butchered by
humans,” even if the humans didn't kill it, Fisher said. He believes the
carcass was placed in a pond — a practice he's observed evidence of at
other dig sites in the area. “It was essentially stored meat,” he said.

"Tai-wiki-widbee" is an eclectic mix of trivialities, ephemera, curiosities, and exotica with a smattering of current events, social commentary, science, history, English language and literature, videos, and humor. We try to be the cyberequivalent of a Victorian cabinet of curiosities.

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Readers - especially old friends, classmates, students, former colleagues, and long-lost relatives - are welcome to email me via retag4726 (at) mypacks.net